


shadows form a grin

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cages, Canon Divergence - Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Rape, Rape Recovery, Restraints, Rope Bondage, Sakaar (Marvel), Sakaar Trash Party, Sexual Coercion, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:35:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27331315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: The first attempt at escaping Sakaar goes poorly, leaving Team Revengers scattered, trapped.The Grandmaster has the princes in the tower. He knows just what to do with them.
Relationships: (past), En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki/Thor, Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993756
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	shadows form a grin

**Author's Note:**

> part I written for whumptober 2020, day 1: Let's Hang Out Sometime (waking up restrained, hanging*) | part II written for whumptober 2020, day 4: Running Out of Time (caged)
> 
> Warnings: while the first chapter is relatively Gen, this will evolved into grandthorki in the second chapter (due up Nov 23), just be forewarned not to get too attached to this chapter if that's something that makes you uncomfortable. so, general warnings, for rape/noncon, drug use, sexual coercion, incest (both forced, and implied past consensual).
> 
> *also I interpreted 'hanging' here as 'suspension' not like...'hanging by the neck'
> 
> titles: 'Human' and 'Crystals', Of Monsters and Men

part I: caught in clouds of silver rope

Consciousness comes, much more slowly than it was lost.

Loki only clearly remembers the moment the obedience disk connected to his skin and the shock of pain so intense it knocked the air out of his lungs before he could even cry out. More distantly, he remembers hearing Thor’s bellow and the prick of a needle that brought deeper darkness.

Loki has no idea how long he swam in the blackness, or what was done to him in the interim. He feels no pain, nothing out of place, but that doesn’t mean much with the drugs still tamping down his senses. He still cannot see, only hear muffled voices around him, the faint click of glasses. If he isn’t mistaken, it sounds like the voices of the tower waitstaff, setting up for a party. But that seems absurd, and he cannot place himself in the context and quickly gives up trying, opting instead to wait until the drugs have further left his blood before worrying about his predicament.

He drifts further, falling into something like sleep, though he does not dream.

When he surfaces again his mind is more clear. He can see blurred shapes, indeed of one of the Grandmaster’s favorite party chambers. Waiters are cleaning and stocking glasses at the bar and chatting among themselves, paying him absolutely no mind.

And Loki can feel his body again. As he processes what he feels, his heart rate picks up, the start of panic. He tries not to let it show on his face. Not that it would matter much, as his expression was distorted into a forced grimace by a thick coil of rope tied and knotted in his mouth as a gag.

He is not naked, but the fabric that covers his body is thin and gauzy; it feels sheer. Ropes wind around his limbs, binding his legs together at the ankle and thigh. His arms were tied behind his back, wrists crossed and bound tight. Another rope winds around his upper arms, connected to the one around his ankles, leaving him contorted in a backbend, with his chest open and exposed. Vulnerable. Loki experimentally tugs at the restraints and they do not budge. His momentary struggle has made clear that the ropes are wound further around his torso in a great spiderweb, snaking all over him. There is a worrying one loosely wrapped around his throat.

He jerks again, impulsively, like a convulsion. That only jostles him on the soft settee on which he is resting, but does nothing to the ropes. He spends the next several minutes trying to think, as the drug further purges from his blood. His greatest asset, aside from his long-ago bound magic, his tongue, was stilled by the thick gag. Hopefully when the Grandmaster returns, he will be amenable to hearing Loki’s side of the story and will remove the gag. Of course, that means Loki needs to come up with a convincing lie by then.

“You’ve been very, very bad, Lo.” Out of time. The Grandmaster gracefully glides from behind him, to sit on the settee just ahead of him. His poise is casual but grave. He is the most serious Loki has ever seen him. He looks at Loki with a flat, grim expression, sitting with one leg crossed over the other. He makes no move to untie Loki, only stares at him like he’s expecting him to respond.

After a long moment of staring at him, the Grandmaster sighs. “I didn’t kill your brother, if that’s what you were thinking,” he says. The thought hadn’t actually entered Loki’s head. He tells himself that it’s because he knows the Grandmaster would prefer a more drawn out form of revenge, but truthfully it is because the thought of Thor’s death was so inconceivable, that outcome had genuinely not occurred to him. Even after his first few weeks on this strange planet, which he spent believing Thor lost to the Void.

The Grandmaster continues telling the fates of his co-conspirators. “The Scrapper has a few more chances left in her, so she’d not dead either. And of course my champion, far too valuable.”

_Where are they?_ Loki thinks. _Where is Thor?_

“Sparkles is tucked away quite neatly, I promise you,” the Grandmaster answers as if he had read his mind. Maybe he had. Loki isn’t able to keep the thought of Thor’s condition out of his mind, but he at least tries to think it with less desperation. “Yup,” the Grandmaster continues, popping the ‘p’. “Tucked away, the deepest place I could put him. Scrapper’s been banished to the outer reach - she won’t like that, but then she shouldn’t have tried to rebel, right? My champion’s the only one of the lot of you who seems like he’s contrite, wants to return to the fold, but I’ll have to be more careful with him, now that I know how…how _changeable_ he is. And you…” The Grandmaster leans back and taps his chin. There’s the start of a grin on his face, a glint of mischievousness in his eye. “I wanted you right where I could see you. And far away from the bad influence of Lord Sparkles. The highest and the lowest parts of the tower. It’s almost poetry, no?”

Loki thinks of himself, bound at the very top of the tower, and Thor deep beneath it, and has to agree. The two princes, prisoners in the tower. He tries to make a sound, tries to convince the Grandmaster to take out the gag but it only comes out as a series of pathetic moans and the Grandmaster ignores him.

“Now, we’ve got a party starting soon.” The Grandmaster sweeps to his feet. Loki laments that he was not able to start trying to weasel his way out of this mess. Next time, perhaps. “We’ve got to get you all settled.”

Loki raises an eyebrow at that. _Settled?_

The Grandmaster grins widely, a wicked, pleased gleam in his eye. “Yes. Right where I can watch you.” He draws a controller out from his robes and Loki braces himself for the shock of the disk, but it doesn’t come. Instead, there is a faint whirring sound and the ropes tighten around him.

Loki is hoisted into the air, supported by the web of ropes and knots around his body. The knots dig in, uncomfortable but not yet painful. They will really begin to hurt in a few hours. The rope under his chin keeps his head back at a hard angle, but he can still breathe. He tries to force himself to breathe evenly, though his heart pounds in his chest. His face burns with humiliation. Right where the Grandmaster can see him, right where everyone can see him. The perfect example made, of what happens even to the rising stars when they fall.

As Loki twists in his bonds, floating high above like some grotesque chandelier, the party starts up beneath him. He closes his eyes against the horrible glances and gleeful stares of his once-rivals, and dreams of revenge.

\- - -

part II: cage me like an animal

It all crashes down much faster than Thor anticipated.

He should have been more prepared. A good warrior is always prepared for any eventuality, prepared for the tide of battle to turn against him, but Thor chalks up the mistake to the general upheaval of his life in the past few days.

So he is not prepared when he steps from the elevator, Loki just ahead of him, for the ambush.

The disk shoots through the air, seemingly from nowhere.

“Loki!” Thor cries in warning, but it is too late. Loki drops, seizing. Before Thor can raise his own gun, something hard hits his back and explodes. Thor is thrown forward by the force of it. Suddenly there are straps, seemingly with minds of their own, winding their way around him, snaking around his limbs and binding them fast to his torso. Thor bellows, straining against them. A hard, short shock from the infernal device sends him to his knees. He tries to rise back up but the straps electrify again, the sting of it lingering and making his muscles tense and shake. The straps are still tightening around him, becoming painful where they dig into his flesh.

Loki is still convulsing on the floor a few feet ahead of him. Thor struggles harder against his bonds, straining to reach his brother. This third shock pitches him forward. It takes longer for this seizure to fade. Thor’s heart has started skipping beats, pounding sickly in his chest. He groans without meaning to, his vision stutters.

A pair of sandaled feet come into view, followed by other, booted feet.

“Really, just…” The Grandmaster huffs. Thor stays still, craning his neck to look up at him. The Grandmaster looks disheveled, furious, a storm of anger in his grey eyes. “I just can’t believe you would dare…”

“You cannot hold us,” Thor groans through gritted teeth. The straps tighten still more, making him wheeze. “We are not your prisoners…we are…” Thor coughs. “You cannot…”

“Oh, I believe I can.” The Grandmaster grins, a wicked snarl. “I’ll prove it to you, Sparkles. I _can_ hold you, I’ll prove it to you.”

Thor senses someone approaching him from behind and thrashes again against his bonds with a roar. It does nothing to budge them. The Grandmaster watches with glee as the guard bends over Thor’s prone form. There is a prick in the back of his neck, and then a sudden spreading heat from the injection site. It rapidly takes the fight out of his muscles. Another guard bends over Loki and injects the same into his neck. His convulsions slow.

The drug go to work fast, quickly making the room spin. Thor feels like he’s going to vomit. His jaw hangs slack. He tries to say something, spit some curse or oath at the Grandmaster, but it is lost in the fast encroaching blackness. His last sight before the darkness is the Grandmaster’s face, twisted into a horrible expression of delight and fury, a bloodthirsty, gleeful smile.

Thor is gone for a long while. He comes to only gradually. At first all he understands is that he is lying on straw. He remembers a long ago game of hide and seek and wonders how long Loki and Sif have been looking for him, but he senses something wrong with that thought. It’s too hard for his muddled mind to work out so he lets it go.

The next time he wakes, he finds he can open his eyes, and sit up a little. A heavy chain hangs around his neck, clanking as he rises. When he gets to his hands and knees, he finds thick cuffs around his wrists and ankles, with thick chains shackling them together. He is in a small, domed cage in the middle of a dark chamber. The air here feels close and damp, like he is deep underground. There is a hum - this must be the very bowels of the Grandmaster’s tower, where the generators that power all the glittering madness above do their work.

There is a faintly glowing orange orb above his cage, providing him with dim light. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he can see other orange lamps above other doomed cages, scattered around the black pit. They all appear to be empty. Thor is alone.

He gingerly sits up and leans back against the bars. The heavy chain attached to his collar affixes to a hoop at the top of the cage. He tugs to test it. The iron does not budge.

Even if he could break his chains and out of this cage, he has no idea where he is in the tower and how to get out of this pit. He has no weapons. The Grandmaster will be on edge following the failed rebellion. He has no chance, not until he can get some further sense of where he is in the tower. He has no idea how he’s going to do that. It all, frankly, looks rather hopeless.

“Damn,” Thor curses under his breath. He cannot conjure any hope for the moment. His tongue feels thick and coated. There is a jug of foul, lukewarm water set just inside the bars. He drinks down half before he thinks to ration it. He has no idea if they plan on returning to him, or if they plan to let him rot down here.

He should not have challenged the Grandmaster. Hold them indeed. He wonders where Loki is being held, if it is in a similarly lonely prison. He has confidence in his brother’s ability to talk and trick his way into a more comfortable cell.

For now, there is nothing more for Thor to do than sit and seethe in his anger and worry and try to come up with some kind of plan for escape.

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2! Yes, so Team Revengers is in a bit of a tight spot, and things will get worse in the next chapter (posting November 23) but then a bit better in chapter 3 (November 24). Sorry for the wait but uh, these were the two I didn't quite finish before the end of October. Whoops! I'll have it done by then though, don't worry. 
> 
> Yeah, also I'll just put it again, _this is definitely heading in a grandthorki direction._ I know this chapter was relatively Gen, but I don't want anyone to be surprised in the next chapter. It's Sakaar so it's...pretty fucked up, as per usual from me. Apologies in advance. 
> 
> I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! Sad that spooky season is technically over, but I'll continue to be spooky in my heart. As always, comments/kudos/shares/frogs appreciated, and thank you to everyone who commented on my first whumptober fic yesterday! Comments are the best writing fuel. XD


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